it's the start of another week

Saturday we had another bout - my team was not playing in this one, so we were in charge of Bout Production and all that.  It was at a different venue from where our bouts are usually held (the place we usually have our bouts was booked every weekend in March), so we had it at one of the local colleges.  We had to borrow sport court from a nearby league and lay it down (at 7 in the morning; whee fun).  We were told it would take anywhere from 2 hours to 10 hours to get it down; we did it in an hour fifteen.  WE RULE.

The venue was really good - they ran the box office and had oodles of security and the sound system was nice and loud - but, as one of the volunteers said, it wasn't the same.  It lacked a little bit of the rough-edgedness that makes roller derby roller derby.  If that makes sense.

Anyway, we had a blast, we had great attendance (no word on exact numbers but the venue holds 2300 and I'd say the place was at least 3/4 filled) and I can't wait until our next bout, when it's our turn.

(Amusing amusery: after the bout, one of the local cable sports channels interviewed some of the players, and did a camera-eye view of a jam, which involved the camera man running around the track holding a camera down at knee-level.   He managed to do about two laps before he fell over, and apparently later when he was doing the actual interviews, he was still out of breath.)

So yesterday was Sunday, another Death Paces.  I keep meaning to show up late so I can avoid the warm-up jog, but I always end up being on time.  Sigh.  Anyway, we jogged for about ten-fifteen minutes, and only really dropped out at the very, very end, so that's something.  I would've been able to do it if Anton Apolo OhHELLno hadn't thrown in all this extra stuff (run this stretch of the rink side-stepping, run this part backwards, do grapevines, etc.).  He said that when we do all that extra stuff, it proves that we could just plain run for the entire time.   Anyway.

So we did dynamic stretching and hopping and this evil, evil thing where we had to do a certain number of burpees in thirty seconds, and then do that number in a minute (if you finish quickly you get more time to rest) for ten minutes.  I HATE THOSE.

So we did more crap like that, leg work and core work and other stuff to thoroughly exhaust us and make us miserable.  Then we had to do a jogging cooldown, and for some inexplicable reason, I had absolutely no problem doing it.  I kept up near the front of the pack, fine as could be.  Weirdness.

Usually for the second half of Sunday practice we put on our skates and do drills, but no one really wanted to do that (a surprising number of people at practice had bouted the night before), so Captainess Awesome led some yoga stuff.  And I realized just how bunched up and stressy I am (one of the other women in the league was trying to help me out with my posture and she was like "relax your shoulders" [I'd relax my shoulders] "no, relax your shoulders" [I'd try it again] "now your neck is all stressed").  Sigh.